When multi-radio user equipment (UE) moves to long term evolution (LTE) (e.g. due to reselection procedure), and does not have Packet Data Protocol (PDP) context but has made a circuit-switched (CS) location update and optionally packet switched (PS) attachment to the operator network (NW), a problematic sequence follows. UE establishes a radio resource control (RRC) connection in order to do a tracking area update (TAU). The network (NW) rejects TAU due to the missing PDP context. Then an RRC connection release message is sent to UE. The UE RRC layer will start handling it but it will delay processing the message for 60 ms in order to send a confirmation of the message reception to the NW (via radio link control acknowledgement (RLC ACK)). That is when the NW knows that it can release UE contexts in the evolved Node B (eNB) handling the NW to UE link.
Immediately upon receiving the RRC release message, UE starts an ATTACH procedure in order to obtain PDP context, but because the RRC connection is being released, ATTACH fails. The failure is reported to the non-access stratum (NAS) layer. In the NAS layer, an ATTACH retry timer (T3411, 10 seconds) is started. The fixed 10 second retry timer causes a greater than 10 second delay in getting service in evolved universal mobile telecommunications service (UMTS) terrestrial radio access network (E-UTRAN).